Just a quick, maybe morally flexible question. Feel free not to reply. I've been working on resizing, expanding on, and skinning of a certain archangel-hermit's truly origianal paper geometric space ship designs. They are currently availible freely. I think I could reinterpret and adjust this geometry to produce art that would be usefull to this community. Obviously if I plan to take this project further than thoughts I will be contacting the designer of said geometry. My query is this: If I could take freely available (with origional artist's consent) geometry and add textures of my own design in order to create another 2-3 factions in Wormhole, for no proft of my own, is this something WWG would welcome?

I'd have to say no, as the use of third party material is not permitted for the sake of sanity and simplicity, and all kitbashes generally must directly derive from geometry or textures in our sets. That's why they're called kitbashes, after all.

I don't know why you even asked, actually, as that's explicitly spelled out in the link in the first post.

DirigibleJoined: 06-05-2009, 12:54 AMPosts: 1104Location: The back of your fridge

Quote:

Kitbash submissions MUST contain some alteration of a previously existing WorldWorksGames products. We will not accept completely original or wholly new elements with no relation to an existing product in our catalog.

Forgive my apparent cranial thickness, but how do new Wormhole ships (for existing races) stack up against the revised rules? If I use the statcard template and armor texture that Denny gave us, but everything else is original... I guess I'm asking if using pre-launch materials still counts as 'existing WWG products,' or if we're now limited to retextures and PDF hacks of the finished product. I'll be sad if I'm not allowed to do anything but repaint ships from here on in.

Normal?!? Man, I'd give my left arms to be normal.

Creator of:

Proud owner of:Several fine WWG products, none of which I can link to due to signature URL limitations.

Ah, but why would original spaceship designs even count as a kitbash in the first place? The whole definition of "kitbashing" is to make something new out of existing parts from other kits, and we have an additional requirement that submissions bring a genuine, substantive enhancement to a specific core product.

We're not saying this just to be killjoys. The fact of the matter is that there are thousands of fans/customers and a very small number of active staff members. If we don't put some sane limits on kitbash submissions and start being more selective about what makes the cut, we run the risk of core product being drowned in a sea of fan-generated content that doesn't carry its own freight in bandwidth or storage costs. Especially now that they're free with core product purchases--this means that now core products have to, in addition to paying their own way, also cover the cost of maintaining and supporting their own kitbashes.

DirigibleJoined: 06-05-2009, 12:54 AMPosts: 1104Location: The back of your fridge

MelEbbles wrote:

Ah, but why would original spaceship designs even count as a kitbash in the first place? The whole definition of "kitbashing" is to make something new out of existing parts from other kits, and we have an additional requirement that submissions bring a genuine, substantive enhancement to a specific core product.

Is that to say a kitbash must be composed entirely of recycled WWG bits? Well, there goes every kitbash I ever made. If providing added tactical flexibility and fleet variation doesn't count as 'substantive enhancement,' please tell me what does. If kitbashes have to be composed entirely of WWG published materials, then all a kitbash is allowed to be is something that anyone could make with scissors and tape.

Of course, you guys set the rules and there's nothing I can do about it, but I contend that in this case you're straying from your own new rules. In Wormhole, the entire game is the 'kit' (it is a single purchase/download) and in order to follow the rules as stated a kitbash must only *contain* an alteration of an existing WWG product, not *be entirely comprised of* said alteration. The new rules, as written, leave plenty of room for original material even if you assume that the altered WWG material should comprise the majority of the bash. By changing the information on the statcard, TOS, and model base, I've altered existing WWG product. With those things being central to every WH unit and accounting for the majority of printout, how can an original model using a WWG-provided texture possibly be a dealbreaker?

Quote:

Project Examples Include:

* Structural Additions: Creating new shapes and geometries from scratch and applying those assets to existing products and texture work.

From the link you kindly provided:

Wikipedia wrote:

Kitbashing or model bashing is a practice whereby a new scale model is created by taking pieces out of commercial kits. These pieces may be added to a custom project or to another kit.

If this is the official definition by which you stand (with the caveat that WWG kitbashes are not allowed to contain outside commercial material), then what is a 'custom project' to which the commercial bits are added, if not something created by the kitbasher? By this definition, new WH units created using existing conventions, textures, and accessories cannot be called anything but a kitbash.

*edited to remove peevish baiting*

Normal?!? Man, I'd give my left arms to be normal.

Creator of:

Proud owner of:Several fine WWG products, none of which I can link to due to signature URL limitations.

Other: We can't account for every submission variant, so if you have questions please let us know what you're considering before you promote your submission!

In every case, the key point boils down to this:

-WWG textures applied to WWG geometry

-Your own textures applied to WWG geometry

-WWG textures applied to your own geometry

...and other permutations, the point of commonality being that the core of the kitbash directly derives from one major component of a WWG model, whether that's texture or geometry. That's what I'm talking about when I linked to the Wikipedia article on the subject: our textures or geometry are the parts that need to be used as the foundation of the kitbash in some fashion.

In the case of your own textures and geometry, you only have to prove that your geometry and textures do not violate a third party's copyrights. This is where CardanoPB's question was answered with a "no", as the geometry involves a third party's copyright. Even if he were to get that person's permission, the agreement would be between CardanoPB and that third party, not us and that third party, and it's simpler to just require that all non-WWG assets be the kitbasher's own work or in the public domain.

Now, you mentioned the texture swatch and stat card template from way back when. Frankly, one small texture swatch and a stat card are only going to get you so far.

We also have better ideas on how to handle game-specific kitbashes in the future, but with all the other stuff on our plate in the short term, we haven't had a chance to catch our breath and hammer those out yet. Denny's been up to his eyebrows dealing with Terraclips, I just came off several months of focusing almost exclusively on programming, and we're still trying to get caught up with a bunch of other things.

We're not saying this just to be killjoys. The fact of the matter is that there are thousands of fans/customers and a very small number of active staff members. If we don't put some sane limits on kitbash submissions and start being more selective about what makes the cut, we run the risk of core product being drowned in a sea of fan-generated content that doesn't carry its own freight in bandwidth or storage costs. Especially now that they're free with core product purchases--this means that now core products have to, in addition to paying their own way, also cover the cost of maintaining and supporting their own kitbashes.

Not that I am complaining about free goodies, but if making Kitbashes freebies is going to have a negative impact on why did you guys decide to go that way? I know I have purchased several of the kitbashes for projects.

For context, I need to mention the amount of stick we were getting publicly because we were charging for kitbashes. The knee-jerk assumption was that we were profiting off "free labor" by selling fan-created content. The truth of the matter is that we had limited staff resources, and managing the kitbashes was a drain on those resources.

In order to free up the content creators to focus on creating new products, we had to have somebody else deal with it, and it wasn't a trivial job. We needed to cover the bandwidth and storage costs, and we also needed to make it worthwhile for the person responsible for administering the kitbashes. Nothing is truly free--it's just a matter of who gets stuck with the check at the end of the meal.

To us, expecting kitbashes to cover their own freight was fair, because they consume bandwidth and storage resources that could have been devoted to a money-earning core product. To many, however, it looked like some sort of greedy corporate money grab. Since the majority of customers don't really care about the whys and wherefores of running a business, and anything that doesn't fit into their mental model of how things ought to work has to automatically be wrong...well, sometimes companies just have to bite the bullet and go with the flow because it's not worth the effort to argue.

An effective way to quell those criticisms would be to simply make kitbashes free with the purchase of their parent product, and that's actually what we wanted to do from the very beginning, for those exact reasons. It just wasn't possible with the old storefront, but we were able to finally make it happen when WWG hired me to develop their new storefront. So, it's not a matter of us changing policy as much as it is a matter of finally being able to implement things the way we'd always wanted to in the first place.

DirigibleJoined: 06-05-2009, 12:54 AMPosts: 1104Location: The back of your fridge

MelEbbles wrote:

We also have better ideas on how to handle game-specific kitbashes in the future, but with all the other stuff on our plate in the short term, we haven't had a chance to catch our breath and hammer those out yet. Denny's been up to his eyebrows dealing with Terraclips, I just came off several months of focusing almost exclusively on programming, and we're still trying to get caught up with a bunch of other things.

I guess I was seeing more leeway than actually exists. I know you guys are still busy; maybe it was just a bad time to pose the question. I suppose I can always work on something personally profitable while I wait to see the game-centric kitbashing rules.

Normal?!? Man, I'd give my left arms to be normal.

Creator of:

Proud owner of:Several fine WWG products, none of which I can link to due to signature URL limitations.

For context, I need to mention the amount of stick we were getting publicly because we were charging for kitbashes. The knee-jerk assumption was that we were profiting off "free labor" by selling fan-created content. The truth of the matter is that we had limited staff resources, and managing the kitbashes was a drain on those resources.

In order to free up the content creators to focus on creating new products, we had to have somebody else deal with it, and it wasn't a trivial job. We needed to cover the bandwidth and storage costs, and we also needed to make it worthwhile for the person responsible for administering the kitbashes. Nothing is truly free--it's just a matter of who gets stuck with the check at the end of the meal.

To us, expecting kitbashes to cover their own freight was fair, because they consume bandwidth and storage resources that could have been devoted to a money-earning core product. To many, however, it looked like some sort of greedy corporate money grab. Since the majority of customers don't really care about the whys and wherefores of running a business, and anything that doesn't fit into their mental model of how things ought to work has to automatically be wrong...well, sometimes companies just have to bite the bullet and go with the flow because it's not worth the effort to argue.

An effective way to quell those criticisms would be to simply make kitbashes free with the purchase of their parent product, and that's actually what we wanted to do from the very beginning, for those exact reasons. It just wasn't possible with the old storefront, but we were able to finally make it happen when WWG hired me to develop their new storefront. So, it's not a matter of us changing policy as much as it is a matter of finally being able to implement things the way we'd always wanted to in the first place.

That makes alot of sense. And then if you just need "that one piece" you can buy it as a separate download, which helps to defray the storage cost.

Wow, just put together a Kitbash submission. While the new guidelines are nice, you do have to pay attention to image sizes in the various steps. The submission post requires smaller images, than the ones required for the actual submission.

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